# Topher Stern > Product Designer & Researcher (ex Google, Facebook - AI, FinTech, EdTech) Location: San Francisco, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/topherstern Hi, my name is Topher Stern. Technology can improve human lives — I make sure it does. I’m an interaction designer and researcher based in San Francisco. I’ve spent the last eight years helping Google, Meta, and more reach global audiences. Let’s make technology work for people — together. My career began with over a decade in global development and humanitarian work. Through nonprofits, academic research institutes, intergovernmental agencies and private sector philanthropies I’ve worked with communities in over a dozen countries throughout Asia and Latin America. I’ve addressed topics ranging from education, nutrition, water access, public health, and environmental sustainability to political organizing, youth development, indigenous rights, economic justice, and gender equity. After completing a masters degree at UC Berkeley, focused on participatory action research, I realized the best way to have impact in all of these areas was to equip people with tools that will help them to navigate our ever more complex world. I immersed myself in the realm of design thinking for tech, and for the past decade have worked with startups, creative agencies, and some of the largest companies in the world. I’ve tackled cutting edge projects involving machine learning, spatial computing, conversational interfaces, autonomous vehicles, and encrypted security. As a designer for Google’s Next Billion Users initiative, I also learned how to expand the accessibility of tech through design for low-cost devices, poor connectivity, low bandwidth, multilingualism, and low technical and functional literacy. All this has allowed me to develop a unique perspective and a honed skillset for understanding the most advanced technologies and making them accessible to the broadest array of people. My design practice is international, cross-cultural, and focused on inclusion and accessibility. I’m looking for projects and teams that know innovation and impact require not only reaching people, but understanding them and offering them real value. I’m also looking for exciting gravel-bike rides, tough bouldering problems, provocative films, and delicious oolong teas. ## Work Experience ### Interaction Designer (via IntelliPro Group) @ YouTube Jan 2025 – Jan 2026 | San Bruno, CA Designing community features for YouTube Trust & Safety ### Product Designer (via Magnit) @ Facebook Jan 2024 – Jan 2025 | United States Design for Creator Monetization ### Interaction Designer @ Google Jan 2019 – Jan 2024 | San Francisco, California As an interaction designer for Google’s Next Billion Users program, I have spent the past five years helping Google reach global audiences. GPAY - I helped GPay reach over 100 million people around the world with enhanced security features and support for new forms of payment in Brazil, India, the USA and beyond TIPS - I led the design of a native app that helps new internet users learn their devices through short-form video lessons in multiple Indic languages, catering to people with low digital confidence and literacy KORMO - I helped design a job-seeking app that has placed millions of people in new opportunities across Bangladesh, Indonesia, and India, tailored to the cultures and preferences of these job markets STATION - I helped design a system providing free public wifi to millions of people in over a dozen global markets, across Asia, Africa, and Latin America including a special partnership with the Tokyo Olympics ### Interaction Designer, Oculus (via TEK Systems) @ Facebook Jan 2019 – Jan 2019 | Menlo Park, California Designing AI assistive features for VR ### Interaction Designer (via Adecco) @ Google Jan 2018 – Jan 2019 | San Francisco Bay Area Principal interaction design for the Google Assistant on KaiOS — the largest surface for the Assistant by daily active users and daily queries. The KaiOS platform for feature phones is bringing advanced technologies to low-cost devices in emerging markets. The Google Assistant is using AI, voice interface, and conversational design to reach users beyond barriers of language, literacy, and economic access. ### UX Designer @ Freelance Jan 2017 – Jan 2018 | San Francisco Bay Area Notable Client: Levi Strauss & Co. - Redesigned the Red Tab Foundation's web presence; focused on conversion optimization for the main calls-to-action: "Request Help" and "Donate Now;" Planned & conducted user research including interviews, comparative analyses, and heuristic audits, facilitated the ideation process & design studio, created content strategy, information architecture, user flows, storyboards, wireframes, prototypes, conducted user testing; incorporated localization for international audiences and accessibility for visually impaired users ### Product Designer @ O/M Studio Jan 2017 – Jan 2018 | San Francisco, California ### UX Designer @ Catalyst Innovation Partners Jan 2017 – Jan 2017 | San Francisco Bay Area Created a design system, global navigation, and site templates for responsive web for Ubisoft. Conducted user research, competitive analysis, and stakeholder interviews. Created information architecture, user flows, sketches, wireframes, and mockups. ### User Experience Design Immersive Student @ General Assembly Jan 2016 – Jan 2017 | San Francisco Bay Area Project - One Medical Behavior Change • Mobile & Wearable App Behavior change feature concept for mobile app promoting medical adherence - the app proactively prompts users to track their adherence to prescription regiments, and track data about their condition throughout treatment; project management, user research, prototyping, usability testing, visual design, interaction design ### Project Manager @ LeEco US Jan 2016 – Jan 2016 | San Francisco Bay Area In this role, I manage teams in legal, customer service, marketing communications, content acquisition, business development, partner outreach, and payment systems. I am working to facilitate the US launch for a China-based technology firm and advise Chinese colleagues on how to best approach the American market and culture. ### Lecturer @ UC Berkeley Jan 2015 – Jan 2015 As a lecturer at Berkeley I was the New Media Instructor for "The Internet & Global Protest Movements." This interdisciplinary course was part of the International Alliance of Research Universities Global Summer Program, and the class included students from leading research universities in over a dozen countries. The class covered a broad range of history, political science, and media studies, regarding various social movements across the globe within the past few decades, and explored the ways in which new media & the internet impacted the work of these social movements. I led workshops that taught students hands-on web design and social media skills. At the culmination of the course I guided student teams in creating web & social media campaigns to describe and promote an ongoing social movement that they had researched. ### Spatial Analyst @ UC Berkeley Jan 2014 – Jan 2015 | San Francisco Bay Area In this role, I collaborated with a team of leading economists in labor policy to design new studies. I created visualizations and wrote reports to communicate research results and influence policy and developed a spatial analysis model to augment an existing study using GIS tools. It required me to collect, query, and analyze large economic datasets including web data extraction. Results from research work went on to be endorsed by the White House and influence labor policy decisions throughout California and the United States. ### Learning & Evaluation Fellow @ Thousand Currents Jan 2014 – Jan 2015 | San Francisco Bay Area Performed data analysis and reporting related to the organizational evaluation report, as well as event coordination for IDEX Academy seminar program. I analyzed monitoring and assessment data from a global network of grassroots partner organizations and generated organizational performance reports to communicate the impact of organizational partnerships. I am especially proud of authoring a guide for organizations seeking to integrate Solidarity Economy principles into their operations. ### Social Enterprise Consultant @ Tata Water Mission Jan 2014 – Jan 2014 | Hyderabad Area, India Provided management consulting and conducted organizational analysis leading to redesigned theory of change, logical framework, & stakeholder web for this social responsibility initiative to install thousands of decentralized water purification plants in rural communities throughout India. Wrote grants that garnered contracts with two additional state governments, leading to over 10,000 new project sites. I also conducted user experience surveys leading to an improved rural delivery system for purified drinking water and designed a nonverbal graphic campaign to convey water safety information. ### Program Coordinator - Alliance Fund @ Community Foundation for Southern Arizona Jan 2012 – Jan 2013 | Tucson, Arizona Area Served as primary contact for all program related activities of the LGBT&S Alliance Fund; a privately endowed fund furnishing grants to nonprofits in Southern Arizona which benefit LGBT communities. As part of my duties, I facilitated and documented board meeting, conducted donor and grant recipient outreach and stewardship, produced and edited publicity material, managed social media, fundraising coordination, event coordination. ### Senior Project Supervisor @ Amigos de las Americas Jan 2011 – Jan 2011 While working the Senior Project Supervisor, I managed 8 staff and 60 youth volunteers in 22 rural communities working on health education projects, overseeing the participatory grant process for community projects, managed materials fulfillment, and created digital multimedia presentations on project progress. I also helped design the organization's first quantitative program evaluation as well as recruited and trained 30 indigenous student interns to collect and analyze program evaluation data. ## Education ### Master’s Degree in Development Practice University of California, Berkeley ### Bachelor’s Degree in Development Economics and International Development University of Arizona ### User Experience Design Immersive General Assembly ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/topherstern - Portfolio: https://topherstern.com --- Source: https://flows.cv/topherstern JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/topherstern/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-13